SAG Awards 2012: Mary Tyler Moore gets lifetime achievement honor

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Mary Tyler Moore’s career has been, as one-time TV husband Dick Van Dyke noted, nothing short of groundbreaking. And her work — in everything from “The Dick Van Dyke Show” to “Ordinary People” was honored at Sunday’s (Jan. 29) Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Moore took the stage to accept and, charmingly, spent her time behind the podium talking about how she came up with her stage name: Mary Tyler Moore. Turns out it’s her real name, but when she arrived in Hollywood she was told to change it because there were too many “Mary Moores.”

“I can’t change my name,” says Moore. “What would my father say?”

Luckily, she quickly remembered her middle name — which she shares with her father — “Tyler” and the rest is history.

Moore recently told the L.A. Times that she doesn’t watch any of the newer single-gal sitcoms currently on TV, like “Are You There, Chelsea?”

“Why would I?” she said. “That story has been done, and I think we did it
pretty well. I don’t need to watch another version.”

A name which became even more fully entrenched in the cultural zeitgeist when the eponymous “Mary Tyler Moore Show” launched in 1970 and ran on CBS for seven years.